The described subject matter relates generally to composite materials and more specifically to methods for manufacturing composite materials.
Because of their high thermal and mechanical performance and relatively low density, numerous cylindrical or ring-shaped components could benefit from the use of Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) in place of metals or intermetallics. The high production cost of current CMCs, and particularly high-density dual-fiber CMCs results in part from multiple long processing cycles to achieve sufficient densification. This has severely limited adoption of temperature resistant CMCs in gas turbine and hypersonic engines.
Currently, two of the primary cost-effective methods of processing dual-fiber hot section ceramic matrix composite (CMC) components are chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) and polymer infiltration and pyrolysis (PIP), either of which can take 20 days or longer to reach “full” consolidation. Another process is glass transfer molding, which is faster than CVI and PIP, but is also much more expensive and resource intensive.